Fantasizing about tasting the wet flesh he'd cupped would make him spend so hard his eyes rolled back in his head.
Once he'd taken his release, a bitter shame would set in. But each night, shame turned to determination to win.
When the tunnel opened up into a soaring cavern chamber, filled with smoke and wafting ash, Bowe hurried inside - and spotted Sebastian Wroth at the edge of a pit of lava, his arm trapped under a huge boulder.
The vampire? When Kaderin should be here tonight?
"What's happened here?"
"A quake... rocks," Wroth grated with difficulty.
"Where's the Valkyrie? She ought to be here, not you."
"I'm here in her stead."
Bowe had suspected that Wroth was newly turned - relatively - but now he knew it. An older, more powerful vampire could have traced out from under the rock.
"You can't reach the prize," the vampire told him in his accented English. "It's on the other side of the pit... and the cable across it snapped."
Bowe surveyed the area and saw the coiled remains of a thin cable hanging loose from the opposite wall. He had rope in his truck but couldn't spy a single place in the sheer rock face to lash it to. Besides, the truck was aboveground several miles away, and with every minute that passed, the curse was siphoning off more of his strength.
He knew the vampire could trace them across with a blink of his eye, but to free him would be a great risk. Yet, though Bowe was weak, Wroth looked much more so. And Wroth didn't want the prize as badly as Bowe - he used this contest only to win over Kaderin.
The vampire was pale as death, blood pooling all around him. If Bowe left him to gear up to cross the pit on his own and failed, would Wroth even be conscious when he returned?
Decided. "I could free you to trace me across. Then, an open contest to take it."
"I could double-cross you."
Bowe narrowed his one eye. "No' if I've got ahold of your good arm."
After a hesitation, the vampire said, "Do it."
Bowe crossed to the boulder and shoved at it. Though he was constantly reminded of how weak he'd grown, he was still confounded to be unable to move a single boulder. He muttered, "Bloody, goddamned witches." Putting his back into it, he asked, "Where exactly are you tracing us?"
"Below the cable, there's a lava tube, another cavern."
"I doona see anything," Bowe gritted out.
"It's there. You want the prize? Then you're just going to have to trust a vampire - "
The boulder toppled over. Before Wroth could trace, Bowe lunged to grab Wroth's left arm, then whistled low at what remained of the vampire's right - pulverized bone and severed sinews of muscle. "That's got tae hurt," he said with a sneer.
"Have you looked in the mirror lately?" Wroth snapped.
"Aye." Bowe hauled him up. "And I plan to kill you for that. After this competition. Right now, I doona have all day."
The vampire seemed to just prevent himself from rocking on his feet. He blinked as though struggling to focus.
Bowe jostled him. "Are you even going to be able to do this - "
Without warning, the vampire traced.
Instantly, they were in a new tunnel. Though Wroth looked disoriented, somehow he'd done it. The smoke and steam were thicker here and flames seemed to sprout from barren rock.
Bowe caught sight of a reflection on the ceiling of the cave. He spied the source deeper within - a shining blade on a waist-high column of rock at the very end of the cavern. Bowe shot forward, sprinting for it. Wroth traced and got there first. He snatched the blade with his good hand and tensed to disappear.
But Bowe had already freed his whip. With a crack, he had the length coiled around Wroth's wrist and yanked down, preventing the vampire from tracing. "I'll be takin' that now."
Wroth transferred the blade to his right hand to raise it and claim the victory. But that ruined arm hung lifeless.
"Canna quite make it to your heart, then?"
The vampire bared his fangs. "I'll gut you before you get this."
"That equals the life of my mate."
"I've the same on my mind," Wroth bit out.
"The Valkyrie died?" That was why Wroth was here instead of Kaderin?
"Not for long."
The look in his eyes gave Bowe pause. He'd seen that level of unyielding determination in his own gaze in the mirror. "We could share it, vampire," he said, disbelieving what he was offering - especially when he had the advantage. "The key works twice."
"I need both of those times... for her." Suddenly, the vampire's wasted arm shot up. Impossible - The blade rose as if by its own accord and struck viciously.
Blood spurted from Bowe's wrist; searing pain erupted as his severed hand dropped. Freed from the whip, the vampire traced the distance across the pit, decisively out of Bowe's reach.
Bowe sank to his knees, staring dumbly at the blood streaming from his body. How? He gaped at his lost hand, still clenching the whip handle. How had that blade risen?
I've... lost? His body shuddered violently at the realization. "I will kill you for this, vampire!" he roared.
Bowe had lost. He wouldn't be able to go back and save Mariah - save her from himself.
He'd lost her. Again.
"I will eat your goddamned heart!" But the vampire was already gone, leaving Bowe trapped in a cavern of fire where immortals went to die.
6
"Jump, Mariketa! I'll catch you."
Mari crawled on her belly inch by inch among the rancid corpses of the incubi slumbering all around her. In the last two weeks, this was the closest that she'd made it to the edge of their lair without waking them.